Could I even imagine myself
Even half-there again?
Shivering, as I toss about
sandwitched between Saum's rale
and Ronnie's uneasy snores.
Shivering, as I reach for the headlamp
and flood Aadhar's contorted face with bright white -
the unorganic shapes that constitute his whole
protest and gesture, seething in anger, warning in pain.
Fidgeting with my bag, fighting with my hair
stuck among the zipper's teeth
finally wrenched free for a minor sacrifice of a few strands.
A cosmic lust takes over, and,
shivering even more I step out into those neverlands that are
a distant conception briefly manifest at this hour.
Shivering, as I trudge blindly on the soft mossy soil,
swept away, as the arms of nature
grip and lift me, high like a child,
raising me to the breasts,
and the mental machinery sets into motion
as the rest of me lapses into a stasis
that forewarns of hypothermia.
This could be the last I breathe.
Like on a deathbed, my head slowly tilts either side
only to study the obscurity of the terrain and the faraway lonely lights of Manali, when
whispers of a freshwater stream nearby comes to console your senses.
Then the head turns skywards, accompanied by deeper breathing and shorter spasmodic shivers:
the sky draped round my shoulders illuminated by an infinitesimal stars that
compel my heart to break into a song while
their the mute, affirming stare awakens inside the concept of pure being.
The ears still listen intently through the skullcap to pick upon the sounds of some forest creature, but finds none -
Even the foxes on the adjacent hill playing into last minutes of dusk have retired into a slumber.
"Couldn't do better on this day, could you?"
you tell yourself at 3800m,
that you must follow such spirit with more of the same.
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